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Sunday, June 07, 2009

Slowly does it...

It's 11pm and there's still barely any results from the UK elections to the European Parliament. Other countries, including France, Germany and Poland, which voted today, as opposed to on Thursday, have already published theirs.

As of 11pm the only definitive UK results are:

Labour keep the Northeast (down 9%) coming top (Hughes), while the Tories came second (up 1%) (Callanan), and then the Lib Dems (Hall) (0%). As 3 seats are up for grabs within a PR system, all three get a seat.

It's obviously likely to be all downhill from here for Labour, however.

There's been a record low turnout at 43% across Europe - down from 45% in the 2004 elections. And there seems to be a perhaps counter-intuitive surge in support for centre-right parties, at the expense of the Left.

See here for the BBC page which will update as the results (finally) come in.

In the studio, Emily Maitlis is using Open Europe's figures published on Friday which show that each MEP costs EU taxpayers an enormous £1.8m a year - research also discussed in detail today on Andrew Pierce's show on LBC Radio.

Meanwhile, the Democracy Movement have published a good argument why the likely results show Gordon Brown must not now "indulge with his fellow members of Europe's political elite in another bout of 'carry on regardless'" when he goes to the EU summit the week after next - when the details of how Ireland will be bullied into ratifying the Lisbon Treaty will be hammered out.